Explanation:
A comet-like tail of glowing gas, 200,000 light-years long,
streams from galaxy C153 as it plunges through
galaxy cluster Abell 2125 at nearly 8 million kilometers per hour.
Itself a member of the giant
cluster of galaxies, C153 may
once have been a spiral galaxy
like the Milky Way.
But this remarkable
series of images, false-color composites
of x-ray and optical data, zooms in on the
galaxy's fate.
A headlong passage through the hot intracluster gas in
the central regions of Abell 2125 is seen to be stripping
C153 of its own star forming material and distorting its shape.
As other galaxies in the cluster suffer a similar fate,
the hot gas collecting in the cluster's core should
become enriched in heavy elements.
The violent spectacle was taking place
about 3 billion light-years from Earth and is thought
to illustrate
a common process in the
cosmic evolution of large clusters of galaxies.